Before coming into Northanger Abbey, Catherine thought it might be a haunted place full of horror and danger, but after her three so-called ―Gothic adventures‖ were all proved in vain and was mildly criticized by beloved Henry, she finally realized how foolish she had been and came to believe that the contents of those Gothic novels have nothing to do with human being‘s everyday life. Here Jane Austen shows her satire on Gothic novels and her sarcasm may be illustrated much more clearly through Henry‘s words:
Dear Miss Morland, consider the dreadful nature of the suspicions you have entertained. What you have been judging from? Remember the country and the age in which we live. Remember that we are English, that we are Christians. Consult your own understanding, your own sense of the probable, your own observation of what is passing around you—Does our education prepare us for such atrocities? Do our laws connive at them? Could they be perpetrated without being known, in a country like this, where social and literary intercourse is on such a footing; where every man is surrounded by a neighbourhood of voluntary spies, and where roads and newspapers lay everything open? (228-229; ch.24)
We may see Henry as the spokesman of Jane Austen and his words as Austen‘s anti-Gothic manifesto to the prevailing Gothic novels and her mockery at their absurdity and remoteness from our daily life and the dangers resulted from Gothic-craze.
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Conclusion
In conclusion, it is obvious that Northanger Abbey shows Jane Austen‘s anti-Gothicism by her parody of the plot, characterization and adventure of the prevailing Gothic novels in her times. In Northanger Abbey, Austen deliberately imitates the Gothic format of plot arrangement, the characterization and the description of heroine‘s adventures, but makes them very different, or the opposite to those in the Gothic fiction in her own style. The heroine Catherine Morland is what she is not, neither beautiful nor destined for a fantastic fate, and her crazy love for Gothic novels, in particular, makes her the typical representative of the ordinary readers. Catherine was at first an innocent and simple-minded girl, but after reading The Mysteries of Udolpho and many other Gothic novels introduced by Isabella Thorpe, she took Northanger Abbey as the imagined Udolpho. At the abbey Catherine had her imagined Gothic adventures and undergone some unpleasant experiences resulted from her ridiculous adventures. Fortunately, she finally learnt her lesson and got out of her Gothic illusions and she has indeed become the true heroine by the end of the story. Through the heroine‘s back to real life, Austen shows us the dangerous and ridiculous confusion between ordinary life and Gothic imagination, and the importance of being realistic and reasonable.
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